So I haven't talked to Amy about this yet, but I think I am going to have to change my concentration. I really liked my installation concentration, but it costs a ton for materials and I can't affort it and niether can my parents. So my mom and dad wanted me to choose a cheeper concentration. So I decided I am going to make bowls with lids. I have a lot of ideas for it and it will be a lot cheeper too. My first bowl I will be working on when I get back is a bowl based on a shell I found that is like this shell. I am going to create a round shaped bowl and a fitted lid and then use slurry to create the lines of dots running up it. Then I'll use a really vibrant underglaze and wipe it off the dots so they are just raw clay.

These are some of the nests I made for two different installations. I will have photos of the completed instillation to show tomorrow during the critique. The birds nest were really fun, but difficult to make. I had to make a lot of them for my dining room, and I think they turned out great. The two normal bird nests in the photo were woven by hand and there are many more made by hand. They were woven just as a bird would do. But I have the benefit of having hands. It was a really interesting process and I appreciate the skill that birds have so much now. I had never thought of it before.

So I know these are blurry, but they were taken with my cell phone. On Friday I put up The AP Art Poster at Jamba Juice and I also put up an empty bowls poster there. I put an empty bowls poster up at Flying Pie Pizza, The Lake Salon, and Wizers also. People were more than happy to let me put them up, which was great!

This week I made a large bowl with a lid. I still have to finish making the lid. I did this for my breadth section in case I want to swap it for anything. This weekend I will being doing my instillations! I am really excited. The first one is going to be a birds nest instillation. My dining room will be covered in nest! I'll also be doing an instillation made from clay around my front door. It's definitely going to be interesting to see what my neighbors think.

This is a type of bird that weaves its nest like this. Each piece of grass is put in separately and woven in and out like cloth. This is what some of the nests in the instillation look like. I'm cheating on making them though, but they look just as interesting I hope. I watched a video of a bird like this making one of those nests and it was incredible!

So I have changed my concentration several times now, but I have finally settled on one that I am really excited about. My concentration would be installations centered around the theme of human absence. Instalations are more or less taking a space and transforming it in some way. They're site specific pieces of art that exist specifically for the space they were created in. By "human absence" I mean what our world as it currently exists (with buildings, homes, etc.) would be like if humans were not here. I will focus specifically on my home and create installations that show nature overtaking the home, with animal nests, plants, and other natural forces invading the space. Each project or instalation will be a different thing that has taken over a space in my home. For example, one will be a room that has been turned into a bee hive. Another will be one in which a spider has made a giant nest. One will be the roots of a tree coming through the walls. Below are some pics of different things that I will do installations on.

Right now I am still working on my human sculptures. (Not the one in the picture). I am pretty sure that I want to do human sculptures for my concentration though. I want to do another human sculpture when I am done with the one I am working on right now. In the next one though I thing I am going to focus on a section of the body to focus on really getting muscle shapes and finer details in the sculptures. I need to get Amy's book and study the bones and muscles in bodies so I can more accurately make the sculptures. I want them to be realistic. I am really interested in acurately creating a human body in clay. I chose this picture because I think it is a good example of really showing all the bones, muscles, and anatomy correctly. If I understand those aspects better, then I will be able to shape the bodies quicker and more accurately. I won't need to rely on pictures like I did for my current project, but instead I'll be able to follow the bone and muscle makeup of humans to make the sculptures. So I really need to get to know the human body, its shape, proportion, muscles, bones, and the way they all interact.

I know that the family projects are already due, but I am still working on mine. I really like making human forms, but it comes with a lot of challenges. For example, trying to make the heads is really difficult, because all of the features are very small. Right now I have the basic forms and I need to start making more details. The idea behind this project is placing a human family in the position of a family in nature, like a family of wolves or bears. Animals have such basic, necessary family units, without the stress that society puts on human families. This project is trying to show the natural simplicity that human families should have.
While I am finishing that project I will also be working on throwing some forms. I want to start by throwing some bowls and vases to freshen up my skills, and then make some pieces that I have been drawing in my sketchbook.